Historian builds database of forgotten World War I memorials

WASHINGTON
— On Nov. 14, 1921, President Warren G. Harding and Army Gen. John
Pershing set the cornerstone for Washington’s colossal National Victory
Memorial, at 6th Street and what is now Constitution Avenue.

World
War I had just ended, and this huge edifice was planned, in part, to
honor the sacrifice of Americans in “the Great War.” There were to be
stars representing each of the nation’s war dead on the ceiling and an
11,000-seat auditorium inside.

But
after the foundation and a long set of stone steps were built, the
project stalled. Money dried up. The war faded from memory. And the
enterprise was scrapped.

With
this year’s start of the centennial of World War I (1914-1918), Mark
Levitch, a Washington art historian, has been scouring the country for
memorials to the war that was to end all wars.

He
has searched the Internet and taken to the road in hopes of assembling,
with the help of the public, a database of the war’s forgotten
monuments. He calls it the World War I Memorial Inventory Project....